Name: ________________________
Mr. Armstrong
Date: _____
SS8 | AIM #: __
Prohibition “A Noble Experiment”
I. 18th Amendment - the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into,
or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes
is hereby prohibited
A. Goals of Prohibition
1. Eliminate drunkenness
2. Eliminate physical abuse
3. Eliminate prostitution, gambling, and other vices
4. Eliminate absenteeism and job related accidents
II. Ways around Prohibition
A. Bootleggers – suppliers of illegal alcohol
B. Speakeasies – bars that operated illegally during Prohibition
C. Volstead Act – made the Department of the Treasury enforce 18th Amend
1. Eliot Ness – D.O.T. law enforcer of Prohibition “Untouchables”
D. Organized Crime – created through the complication of manufacturing, storing, transporting, and selling
alcohol
1. Organization of gangsters controlling parts of bootlegging in cities
(eventually expanded to prostitution, gambling, etc =racketeering)
2. Paid off police officials and judges
3. Rival gangs had city wars over territory where they sold goods
(increase in violence, “Thompson,” and bombings)
a.) St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
4. “Scarface” – Al Capone – notorious gangster – Chicago
III. Prohibition Ended in 1933 with the Passage of the 21st Amendment
IV. Was the “Noble Experiment” a success???
Supports or
Opposes
Prohibition
Intended
Audience:
Main Idea/
Message of the
image:
Effectiveness?
Explain:
Supports or
Opposes
Prohibition
Intended
Audience:
Main Idea/
Message of the
image:
Effectiveness?
Explain:
Supports or
Opposes
Prohibition
Intended
Audience:
Main Idea/
Message of
the image:
Effectiveness?
Explain:
An American Tragedy
Supports or
Opposes
Prohibition
Intended
Audience:
Main Idea/
Message of
the image:
Money to
hire “best”
attorneys and
to bribe
politicians
Effectiveness?
Explain:
State, in your own words, the main ideas in the following Prohibition quotes…
1.
“Prohibition permitted the Protestant countryside to coerce the newer Americans in the city. One ‘dry’ asserted: ‘Our nation
can only be saved by turning the pure stream of country sentiment and township morals to flush out the cesspools of cities
and so save civilization from pollution.”
2.
The satirical essayist H.K. Mencken claimed that prohibition had caused suffering comparable only to that of the Black Death
and the Thirty Years War.”
3.
If the Christian vote did not go to the polls, ‘we shall see our towns and villages run-ridden in the near future and a whole
generation of our children destroyed.”
4.
“Twice a week he [Harding] sought to banish care by inviting his friends to the White House for poker parties. Liquor
flowed freely at these affairs, for the President – like many other Americans-did not take prohibition seriously. They ‘drys’
got after him, however, and he finally confined his drinking to the family bedrooms.
Source: Santarosa.k12.ny.us